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MONOGRAPHS 



MONOGRAPHS 



BY 



WILLIAM FREDERICK ALLEN 




Boston 

The Four Seas Company 

1919 



Copyright, ipip, by 
The Four Seas Company 



Uti; 29 19(9 



Boston, Mass., U. S. A. 
The Four Seas Press 



yGI.A55920l 



ri 



To 
S. A. 

WITH MEMORIES 



CONTENTS 

HYACINTHUS 

SEERS OF VISION 

THE STOKER 

NO CROSS 

TRINITAS 

MY FATHERLAND 

FIFTY YEARS HENCE 

BEWILDERMENT 

FOR YOU 

THE GARDEN BUILDER 

THE UNASLEEP 

AVE IMPERATOR! 

GOOD THOUGHT 

THE FINAL JUDGMENT 

THE BIG SMASH 

SECOND FIDDLES 

A NEW ENGLAND MEETING HOUSE 

THE PIPE 

"OMNIA MAJOREM DEI GLORIAM" 

ALL SAINTS' SAY 

MIDNIGHT IN NEW YORK .. 
THE DEATH OF OLD GERMANY .. 

ENGLAND 

POET TO WOMAN 

LONDON FOG 

SIMPLICITY 

WINTER TWILIGHT IN PRAGUE .. 

THESE DAYS 

YOU WHO ARE DEAD 

PATRIOTISM 

"GONE WEST" 

CHUCKED 

CONDOLENCE 

AMERICA 

KING GEORGE 

INTERRUPTED 

DEATH AND DAWN 

THE OLD HOUSE 

THE LONE CYPRESS AT MONTEREY 

GOD'S ANTHOLOGY 

IN FLORIDA 

FROM MY DORMER WINDOW .. 

RIPE GRAPES 

NUNC DIMITTIS 

POST BELLUM 

THE FAUN 

EVENING IN A HOSPITAL .. 

THE HOME COMING 

THE GRAY DAY 



Page 
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67 



MONOGRAPHS 



HYACINTHUS 



Who sports with the gods must die! 

Woe, oh woe! 

Who prays for the wings must fly; 

Fate wills so. 

Who mocks at the loving friend 

Hath signed his death. 

He comes to the silent end 

Who scorns love's breath ! 

Thou, Hyacinthus, thou 

Didst spurn thy friend! 

Now, Phoebus playmate, now 

What is thine end? 

The stricken Zephry weeps 

Where thy white body sleeps ; 

The Sun-god lingers near 

And drops a shining tear. 

Where art thou 

Fair pouter now ? 

In the shades where lovers wait 

Message from the loved one's gate — 

Dead — alone. 

[II] 



A wind tossed stone 

Hath laid thee low ! 

Phoebus' kiss may not awake 

Nor thy beauty's silence 

Poor boyfair, no ! 

But still a flower soft in name 

Sighs why Hyacinthus came; 

The Zephry moans 

Where blood-kissed stones 

Have stained thy hair. 

The morning air 

Is sad with Phoebus' long-drawn sighs ; 

And when the pensive daylight dies 

He dreams on thee. 

Divinity 

Hath kept thee in his heart and soul; 

His melodies have sung thy dole. 

So what's amiss 

To die when Phoebus loves thee best? 

And earth bears on her fragrant breast 

Thy blood in flower? 

The high god's kiss 

Was thine, an hour. 

So thou art blessed past grief's annoy— 

The god of gods hath loved thee, boy! 



[12] 



SEERS OF VISION 

Thou art a Seer of Vision — thou — and thou! 

And I am run to kiss ye — brothers all ! 

My couch is heaped where forest pines grow tall — 

Where shyest birds nest on the thicket's bough ; 

And thou art of an attic's pinched confine — 

And thine is ermine of a purple throne — 

And thou doest pray where altar lights are thrown 

On acolytes bowed in a decorous line! 

Greet ye, my brothers ! "For us creeds unbend 

And royal kings wear homespun ! Attic walls 

Picture arbutus ; each to each is friend — 

And self same sun to self-same vision calls ! 

We gather up dead dreams as diamond dust 

And shape new dreams, the better for their death ! 

We lisp new tongues, we voice a Shibboleth 

From broken hopes till new worlds form their crust! 

Each to his own domain, his star of things — 

To dream, till dreams are Vision, faith is Sight." 

Each with the half -blind eyes made quickened light — 

Each with the feet grown fast Icarian wings ! 

Four points of Vision! Forest, attic, throne 

And olden gloried Church ! Each seer a god ! 

Each stumbling out a path the seers trod 

Of us unknowing, to us loved and known ! 

Oh, brothers to my woods ! The brook has wine 

Of sun-dyed summer! Let me play the host! 

Come thou, and thou, and thou, The Holy Ghost 

Hath signed my treasure yours, your treasure mine ! 



[13] 



THE STOKER 

How did he get there? 

Who does he stay there? 

How could I get him away? 

I'd die in such excluse of free summer air! 

I'd die if my day were his Pluto's day! 

There's something about him not human ! 

Is he flesh, as I'm flesh, born as I am, of woman? 

Is he Fafner or Titan? Has Thor 

Left Thorlings on earth? He's iron to the core — 

A god — but, My God, such a face ! 

'Tis a brute's ! Is he one of my race 

Or shoot of a planet swung out of space 

And dropping its left overs on this terrene? 

And how could I help him? A boon 

To him Casey's corner saloon — 

The loud-natured gaff of his kind. 

A Sampson in strength, but a child in his mind — 

His mien no birth-mark my mien. 

Reason him? No! Pity him? Explain him? No! 

Yet his is one part of the voice that shouts "Go!" 

When this creature of science sweeps in her pride 

For a caprice of whim 

Like Dian turned bride. 

He's something to me ; I'm nothing to him ; 

If I love him, 'tis with head, not with heart; 

And head without heart is the scurviest part; 

His look fends thought from my speech. 

Why show him pomegranates he never can reach? 

The dried fruit he knows ; why harrow and teach 

Till his taste grows, and orchards with never a peach 

[14] 



For his eating! 

Alas, there's no platform of meeting! 
Sit him down to a symphony; some blotch of a tune 
Abortion of music, his tear or guffaw. 
There's no quick prescription of man-cozened law 
To bid an oaf thrill at the first rose of June 
And beauty's a magic ne'er to be seen 
But by the beauty born. 

I'm out again; back to the earth's bliss of green. 
He stays there — forlorn? 

Or happier than I am: I hear him, "That swell 
Don't know he's a-livin' — a drink pard — oh hell" 
And yet there's a God ; He made us ; and I 
And my huge stoker brother walk 'neath the same sky 
Lick up the same air in deep meeds of breath 
And live out a life to the free soil of death. 
And though I'd fain reason him, my reason won't tell 
How he got there ; 
Why he stays there ; 
Why he won't break away 

And live his full birthright of sunlight and May. 
How I got here ; 
Why I stay here ; 
Why I don't break away 

Who knows? And my stoker? God tell us, some 
day! 



[15] 



NO CROSS 

I bear no Cross — 

And therefore my loss. 

Death hath walked blind for me — 

Life hath smiled kind on me: 

When I would weep, dry dust were my tears. 

Fate spared me sorrow for humankinds' biers — 

Roses have reft for me, thorns. 

Wine sparkled in deep horns — 

And thus, I bear no Cross. 

And whence my loss? 

When others weep they read my tears as stones; 

My banquet paeons chill their requiem groans 

For mankind worse than dead. 

My heart lies emerald-crusted, ruby sharp — 

The cynic's discord haunts my spirit's harp 

That fain would sing of grief. 

Come Fate, bold ruthless thief — 

And strip mine orchard of its veinous sweets ! 

When sorrow next me greets 

Let her behold me clad in poverty — 

Feet bare, eyes blurred to see 

Life's worst; that I may clasp some work-worn hand 

Whose touch my fine skin's silk may not withstand 

With curse, "What hast thou with me !" Let me bleed 

Till I be healed of God, and cry "My creed 

Is mankind's own; I know, I bear the Cross — 

And know not isolation's worse than loss !" 



[i6] 



TRINITAS 

All-Father God is as the world at night ; 

Hints in the sky, of never sleeping suns; 

Unfathomed currents of etheric runs — 

Assumptioned dark, but, certain, molten light. 

Omniscient vastness ! Faith in stars and space — 

Limits unlimited ! Deep evolved to deeps ! 

Security, that somehow, somewhere, keeps 

A tireless vigil of eternal Grace ! 

And Christos God beams as the rising sun 

Who colours edgeless forms to shapes concrete ; 

Man glimpses traces of His hands. His feet 

In each new impulse of the day begun. 

The awfulness of night dispels in dew 

And morning freshness ; hope enforces sense 

To fuller being; some immortal lens 

Defines the Living God child-born, anew! 

But God the Holy Ghost, like some ravine 

Fast set mid ice-looked hills, gives forth no sign 

Of Deity, nor marks Himself divine 

Till God Allfather, Christos God are seen. 

Then fullest silence, incarnate in love 

In truth eternal, shadows visible! 

The Triune God in presence visual 

Illumes all space. Around, Within, Above! 



[17] 



MY FATHERLAND 

Where lies it — Greater Anglia — my Fatherland? 

Each reef where syllables the English tongue! 

Where'er an English verse, soul born, is sung 

There am I native ! There my flag, my strand. 

Or Union Jack or joyant Stripes and Stars 

No alien I b'neath either pennant ; mine 

The heritage of Shakespeare; Cana's wine 

Blushes for me by far Australia's bars 

As by rock-starred Maine; my brother he 

Who loves my Hawthorne with me ; let him hail 

From tide-hemmed Faulkland ; let his pearl-dipped sail 

Be set Hawaiian in the west-east sea ! 

What makes the foreigner? He whose heart 

Holds not the tongue I love ! — mine English right ! 

Him I may whisper, ''God give thee good-night" 

Is of my loins the most integral part! 

My Fatherland? My sun-proud spot of birth? 

Each vibrant clod of English-speaking earth? 



[i8] 



FIFTY YEARS HENCE 

Fifty years hence; the lad we plied 

To stricken France with convoys' train — 

May lean, an old man, 'gainst some fence 

And garble dried herbs o'er again 

Of trenches, long syne bearded fields 

The richer for their crimson bust. 

Drone toothless jars of Zeppelin birds 

With Anti-Christ's black pinions trussed. 

Naithless, above his frost bleared head 

Some new air bastard may contort — 

Though fixed in his war clouded mind — 

The year when nature ran distort 

With streaming hair, and palsied scream — 

When men gnashed thoughts embowelled in hate. 

He young, changed old; beheld for aye 

But France as the one square of fate. 

Unheeded as he mumbles on 

With gesture of his long-lived age — 

How what was Prussia griped the world — 

And greened anew old history's page. 

With feeble pipe he'll shrilly rant 

Of France, how England stemmed the tide — 

America last bared her arm — 

For honours' name young millions died! 

Fifty years hence ! And thus will speak 

These unborn minnows, bred to rules 

We wot not of; "These dotards squeak 

Like antique mice; away with fools 

Who mouth a Prussia lest than least. 

Why gnaw dead history's girth of bones? 

[19] 



The seas are free; their battle brunts 

Scant heeded mounts of scarce read stones!" 

But still we plied the lads of France 

For that posterity who seem 

A. dream unborn ; to whom we'll shape 

The shadow of a long dead dream. 



[20] 



BEWILDERMENT 

Submission — resignation. 

Are these the vestibule afront the door 

Of life eternal? To hear Zambesi's roar 

Nor heed it with the loin embued elation 

Youth's prompting circles — one mad leaping band 

Of heart plus soul, plus brain, plus Pan? 

Am I grown one with Christ? Is God's right hand 

Transforming me Saint John from Caliban? 

Or is ambition's fervour, tearful fled 

From me twain Icelands' cold ? Lord, do I sleep 

Dropped on mine eyes the film of atrophine — 

My veins time sluggish to the cast-off dead 

Who "rest eternal — light perpetual keep" — 

Mere deadwood, hush of summer fire and green? 



[21] 



FOR YOU 

For you he fought ; ne'er shall the f oeman's tread 

Profane the violet fragrance of your dust. 

Ne'er shall your grave be tramped by German lust — 

Thus did he guard the tryst sleep of his dead. 

Other's hallooed, fresh from their sweetheart's kiss — 

The arms' embrace, the heart tuned to the heart. 

God fend their love ! Not his their rapture's part — 

His was a shadow's dream, a captured bliss. 

And this his woe : 'neath custom's rigid guise — 

That hear "Good-Bye" breathed to another's ears — 

Beholds another dewed with vesper tears 

And looks at love caught in another's eyes. 

And yet was his a strength, they scarce could know 

Those quick young saplings; those whose pulses 

burn — 
Whose prayer demands their laurel twined return — 
God's victory wrest from time's most deadly foe. 
The great word, "Home" their slogan ; 'neath a tree 
In sacred Flanders, some unconscious Hun 
Made free his soul; his black of day was done — 
And 'twas your smile, erst years his rosemary 
For you — for England — yea, for France — His God — 
For soft-browed Death! What now the mirk of grief? 
Peace to your dust! No heathen German thief 
Dare break the holy silence of your sod ! 



[22] 



THE GARDEN BUILDER 

He who sows a garden, builds for God 

And to that end I work ! The trowel's edge 

Upturns and digs th' alembic of the soil 

To His great glory. Kings, and studded czars 

Upraise the sceptre, and to their decree 

Vast tablets rise in monumental stone 

And rich-veined marble; noble are such deeds 

And he is worth the laurels who so builds. 

More worthy he, of more supreme renown 

Who paints a picture ; he who carves his thought 

In precious matrix; rifle Daphne's groves. 

And crown these monarchs with the gods' esteem ! 

Still greater is the poet; in his lines 

The picture paints, the marble falls in moulds 

Of frozen music. But, the gardener 

Surpasses painter, poet, sculptor, all; 

For God Almighty, as the sage hath said 

First made Himself a garden, in the times 

When transience lingered with eternity — 

And truth, as yet, knew nought of falsehood's shame. 

Thus he who plants a tree, resembles God 

In earth's first Eden; he who tills the soil 

For beauty's virtue, dreams virginity — 

Millenium once known, and ages lost. 

No dullard is the gardener ; his no pain 

Of weary tedium; his the joy undimmed 

Bestowed on those who plant, and delve the earth 

To symbol resurrection. Hear, ye men, 

Give to the earth the flower-pregnant seeds — 

That she may sing a joyful stave to God ! 

[23] 



Make firm the stripling trees, and ye shall do 
The golden deeds that win the smiles of God! 
Perchance the garden-dreamer may restore 
The Eden-hour again — oh happy thought — 
And sinlessness and truth be incarnate 
In leaf, in flower, and garden holiness! 



[24] 



THE UNASLEEP 

For such as I, God pray — the Unasleep ! 

The weary swimmers on the midnight deep 

Of soul-rest and repose! 

The waking throes 

Of doubtful half-dreams, hinted nightmares ; thrills 

Of slumber journeys up steep-breasted hills — 

The hideous starts to life! 

This is our doom; the slow turn of the knife 

The dull night through 

Till morning dew 

As shallow substitute for Sleep ! 

Oh well for those who wide-eyed vigils keep ! 

Or well for those who chortle as the swine 

In sottish Lethe ; those who reach the fine 

Of dreamless rest! 

But God— we Unasleep ! The stab i' the breast 

By every creature of the baleful night ! 

Each flicker of the nightlamp's restless light; 

The long wail of the melancholy cat ; 

The chipper-chipper of the evil bat : 

The stern glance of the cold, imperial moon — 

The shuffling step of some drink-glad buffoon 

Who matters in the silence-shrouded street. 

The lone patrolman on his measured beat ; 

The chance pedestrian whose feet resound 

In quick-step o'er the pavement-piercing ground— 

What maddening staves they sing ! 

What ghoulish shapes the long-armed shadows fling 

Across the trappings of the loud-voiced room ! 

And we— the Unasleep— who through the gloom 

[25] 



Half-wake, half-sleep, hal f -dream ! Who turn and 

toss — 
Who yearn for peace, if but the tomb's cool moss — 
What tortures of the damned do we endure! 
The scaffold's hempen were a welcome cure; 
The Iron Maid, an action of delight — 
'Gainst these thin phantoms of the mocking night — 
These dreams that be no dreams ! 
How foolish seem the stars with their cheap gleams — 
How futile seem the storms when they do chance ! 
What were a lover's kiss, a friend's soft glance? 
The monarch's sceptre, dubbing us as knight? 
The purest joy, earth's most effulgent might 
To us, the cureless, death-shunned Unasleep? 
We sigh as hapless Henry, or like him 
The ghostly mariner, whose eyes strained dim — 
Glared, red with pain, on Sleep that fled his face ! 
We pray — we pray; could Mary, with her grace — 
Or Christ Himself — could they but see our woe — 
Then might they learn what sorrow man can know ! 
Alas, they sleep above! Their calm is deep; 
And God and Nature shun the Unasleep ! 



[26] 



AVE IMPERATOR! 

Hail, vernal, smiling Death! 

I will not have thee cold ! thy smile a sneer 

At man's poor despite! I will not paint thee fear 

Thou fair bestower of the Further Breath 

Great God doth give! 

I will not gasp "I die,"— I'll shout "I live!" 

When night's soft mellowing haze extends the gold 

My sunset boasts! 

When every Rosary Bead last time is told — 

And every Sanctus Bell last time is knolled — 

I'll gird me for the coasts 

Thy sea fresh Presence brings ! 

Who deems thy voice knife sharp? The tid that sings! 

The greenwood dark to poetry's eteme 

Carols no sweeter than thy harmony ! 

I've heard full many a leaf entangled burn 

Slip through the fields, but none croons staves as thee 

Thou summer of the spring ! 

I've heard thee laugh of childhood's faery ring 

And crack quick jests as children spanned thy back 

To run afar with thee. 

Thou art no ghost! Thou art no iron-tongued rack 

As sorry mortals cry thee ! Azrael 

With face avert and dread sword ever bright 

To slay, men whisper thee. Why build bald hell 

Of blearing black of thee who art pure light 

And God's eyes are thine own! 

Thou art no requiem sob ; thou art no moan 

Of thorn-pierced grief ! 

Thou art no midnight vigilant sleepless thief — 

[27] 



For Sleep hies with thee; loveliest harbinger 

Of silvern dreams we may not dream here ! Myrrh 

Is not thy cup, and ice is not thy touch. 

Not thine the Master Corsair's boding clutch — 

A finger-print of goodness is thy mark! 

Nor have I seen the shroud sail of that bark 

Men garnish thee therewith ! With feathered oar 

On stilly seas I've seen thee. Oft 

I've followed thee beneath the orchard croft 

And watched thee read the script of blossom lore. 

When leaves were tenderest green and apple's pink 

Bound Heaven to earth in long bands of perfume ! 

Shrink, friend, from thee? Why, Angel, should 

shrink 
And throw about thine head a fold of gloom? 
Have I not spied thee sporting midst the bloom 
Of May's first showing? And shall I close a tomb 
Of that but is the Necessary Womb 
Of newer Life's seed substance? Nay! Come then 
And let us count the true shades down the glen 
Mortals call Vale of Shadows ! Come 
When corn is tasseled and the glad bees hum 
With honey of the June! 
Lute out for me an olden ditty's tune 
Of Rosalind or mad-cap Robin Hood! 
Come when thou wilt; thy coming is but good 
And thou art faery Oberon to my thought 
More than King Angel ; and come unsought 
Ere life doth make me old ; for thou art young 
And I would harken to thy music's tongue 
With heart child joyful; come then, Death 
For Thou art Victory's Kiss and Beauty's Breath ! 

[28] 



GOOD THOUGHT 

If good wine's worth drinking 

Then good thought's worth thinking — 

Or better no thought at all ! 

For poor wine's but sour ; 

And poor thought's ne'er flower 

To roses worth naming Saint Paul ! 



[29] 



THE FINAL JUDGMENT 

Elohim-sense stripped clean of flesh; 
The kernel of the soul laid bare ! 
Stuffs filched out from suppression's mesh — 
Corporeal in the keen-eyed air! 
Each sin disrobed of life's abuses — 
Each virtue weighed exact in worth ! 
Each impulse freed from gauze abuses — 
The whole seized from the cloy of earth! 
Thank God a God is Judge ! I'll tell 
My reasons branded reasonless ! 
And why, what seemed a lust of hell 
Flamed out a fire love needs must bless ! 
My voice quick stifled, an I speak 
Herewards to men my rights turned wrongs ; 
I'll shout to God, how strong, why weak 
I trammeled in my several thongs ! 
Sin's nucleus glorified in truth — 
I'll chant with God's firm clasp of hand — 
I'll sort the grain from chaff of youth — 
And thank God, God will understand ! 
So, fear the Judgment? Rather fear 
The stupid law of man below ; 
Loins girt, heart singing, I'll appear 
Face God, tell all, and God will know ! 



[30] 



THE BIG SMASH 

Till the Big Smash comes — 

The man is a brute ; 

An insect that hums / 

Mid sweet nectared fruit 

Unfit for the solitude grandeured by thought. 

Weak brawned for the forges where iron truths are 

wrought. 
Small troubles, the hare's bite the parsley amid; 
Soon grown o'er, the nibbling by pushing shoots hid, 
But the Big Smash — a foundering mid torture of 

rocks — 
A sob to the heedless that life's tournay mocks. 
Then after — the silence: the healing of wounds; 
An ear harp accord to the wildering of sounds 
The world shrieks. 

An eye quick to rose dust of tears on the cheeks. 
The heart quivering sharp to the warmth of the hand. 
The lips' press, "Come, comrade; I too understand!" 
And the man born, true upright; true jointured with 

Christ ; 
Who clasped Jew and Greek in the brotherhood tryst. 
When the Big Smash fails 
A life is a death! 
And a sad Heaven wails 
For a lost gift of breath ! 



[31] 



SECOND FIDDLES 

Gray heroes, these; the drab contralto third 
Their ash-hued lot. These line the walks of life 
As meek medicinal herbs : the second wife 
Like to some voiceless hedge contented bird 
Who weaves her nest with noiseless tender love 
Unpraised and patient; such a Phoebe she 
Who becks a ghost wife's children to her knee 
' And feels affection's hand touch 'neath a glove — 
No glow of true warmth's flesh; the maid unwed 
Grown old in sacrifice ; the man whose toil 
Sends forth a brother where ambition's moil 
Slakes gold, fit crowned for him in proxy's stead. 
Madonnas who give forth their virile Christs 
Then humbly shrinking 'neath the willow shade; 
Second fiddles ; Magnificats assayed 
That Song with God may hold its glory trysts ! 
Mid Stradivari of earth's violins 
The silent angels mark these second ones; 
Not theirs the strings of ribbon lustrumed suns 
But theirs the hum of quiet singing linns. 
Praise to the second fiddle ; should he fail 
The first must fall from Music's God to Baal ! 



[32] 



A NEW ENGLAND MEETING HOUSE 

Meeting house — in truth ! What makes the Church — 
The Psalm, the Sacred Host, the AUar's heart 
This white pile lacks ; and yet the charm is here 
The charm New England holds in firm-clutched 

leash — 
Feared to let slip, and show the dryad's smile 
Beneath the frigid virgin's austere frown! 
A beauty as of violets found in clefts 
Of frore beard rocks; architecture? None 
Of Rheims or Cologne; yet the thus-and-so 
Of prim hewn walls is ice-bound music seemed — 
The sombre swell of gray Georgian chaunts — 
Or Palestrina's clef of treble fauns 
Baptized and garbed as nuns ! Maple luxuriance 
The elm's grace vesture, benediction give 
Of green old Pagan nature — bless her soul — 
The loved untamed barbarian! "Vanity 
Is Beauty's face ; and Life is but a sweet 
We needs must sour, or our duty's dead.' " 
Thus preachers droned ; but elm and maple laughed 
And tipped and lurched, while nasal psalmody 
Arose in quavers on the Sabbath air 
And shattered 'gainst their branches ; meeting house — 
Wilt take a greeting from a son of Rome — 
Thy fearful "Scarlet Woman"? Cross and cowl 
And true made priest, thy lack — yet, grim browed 

friend 
I'll whisper thee a secret ; she will know 
The Juno elm, or that bold Mercury 
The gamboling maple — that iron spine you boast 

[33] 



Of holden virtue, is the jewel of Rome 
Poached by an errant child ; so, good will, friend — 
For though thou champed the door to bar her out 
In thy duir heart our great Rome entered in ! 



[34] 



THE PIPE 

You've piped to me, old Death — 

Thrice, with voice of mouse's squeak ! 

I girt in haste, with saints to speak 

And deemed them worth a puff of breath. 

The whiff of feast, that counterfeit 

Of you, old Death, called Life, affords. 

I culled old psalm staves — Lord of Lords 

And King of kings; the room was lit 

With Aves, Venites, Adestes — I knew 

How Christ looked: how His Mother smiled, 

I smelled the lilies, saw her cloak of blue; 

Some ante chamber, silence tiled 

I felt was built for me; and then 

You scruffed me back, you piebald god — 

A sick bed ! Moss of scragged fen 

After wide rose acres ! Untrod 

The stepping stones of unfamiliar space; 

Now that I'm back to number and place 

What compensation offered? If again you pipe 

Let your skull-sconce certify the angels' fruit as ripe! 



35 



"OMNIA MAJOREM DEI GLORIAM" 

Loyola, hadst thou made no pledge but this 

Foremost thy station mid the sons of God! 

This chaplet; 'tis the Hebrew singer's rod 

Psychos to call from Panian chrysalis ! 

But this the slogan of those supermen 

The star-eyed Jesuits, cross-bowed of hate, 

Who brushed old slumber from the Sphinx of Fate 

And sowed the lily in the dragon's den ! 

Bruised, spat upon; their truths distort to lies 

These words the Rosary of their every breath ! 

Thus hewed they life, ploughed Beulah fields in Heth 

'Neath frore of bergs and carmined southern skies ! 

Oft have I marked the humble spoil of stones 

The sad marcation of an holy fane; 

Where spake these men as n'er man speaks again — 

Ezekiels mid the chaos vale of bones ! 

To God's great glory; Luther, Calvin, Knox 

Base metals 'gainst this diamond orthodox! 



[36] 



ALL SAINTS' SAY 

Saints were warriors — I'll chew on that! 
And most of them warred on little things ; 
Little wasps, whose petty stings 
Wounds of mighty pain begat! 
And they didn't fare forth with broil of drums 
To pompous battles with swords waved high 
But they walked where life turned down its thumbs 
And callously bade the unfit die. 
For they turned dry earth into fertile sod 
.Cried "Nil Desperandum" from Ichabod 
These Saints we laud today! 

And we have their blood, and we have their might 
And we can't twist wrong from the spoken right 
For their truths we must obey! 
And we'll burst forth, as virgin maids 
And warrior knights, and we'll ply God's trades 
By the Christ that speaks within ! 
For we'll break the glebe of stubborn sin 
As strong-girt Saints, and we'll wreak the best 
From untilled soils, and doubts confessed — 
That they may know who fought before 
We still have the stuff to fight God's war! 



[37] 



MIDNIGHT IN NEW YORK 

Chance sleeps tonight some promise of a child 
Foredoomed by Nature's tooth, rat-like to merge 
From human sewerage, oozing from its verge 
These rodent souls. (How matter hath defiled 
The spirit God makes pure!) The quiet seems 
A secret hiss of unseen cobras ! Lairs 
Of fevered wolves, these houses ! Glares 
A snarl of moon; here sing no lyric dreams 
Of frond-tipped fancy; jaw-champed faces wear 
The jungle likeness ; here slink beasts, not men ! 
Each chance abutt the jackal's covert den — 
Not women, she-dogs, brazoned in despair 
This sisterhood immortal; yet outlines 
The Christian's Cross against the pallid sky 
Symbol of Him who asked and answered "WHY?" 
The question failed of human-skilled designs. 
Let me this question ask, "How much is sin 
What loneliness, what heart-ache, dearth of soul 
In this outpouring? I'st the brain's control 
Alone that breeds the lust carked deep within 
Our carven loins ? But God, All God, doth know 
And God is patience, born eternally. 
But weary age seems Atlas laid on me 
That sacred life must crawl in offal so ! 



[38] 



THE DEATH OF OLD GERMANY 

There lives a land whose death is Sodom's end 
Whose name shall live an hissing, a reproach. 
But, lived on land, the wide world hailed as friend — 
Passed with Kultur's syphilis encroach. 
A land whose every window framed a light 
For Him the Christ-Child with His young good will ; 
(The blue-eyed tots who chattered Christmas night 
With hearts of stone soon marshaled forth to kill!) 
Sodden with drink, scarlet with whorish lust 
The junglings closed, who hailed Saint Nicholas. 
Sweet sane old customs spurred heels tramped to dust 
Song's golden store lay rent where demons massed! 
Toll, toll the bell ! She welters, smitten, slain 
Our fair Rhine-maiden, old loved Germany; 
From whose white hands and balsam learned brain 
Dropped purest songs of holiest minstrelsy ! 
All, all are gone; the Minnesingers' art 
Whose wreath empyrean clasped the lore of Rome I 
Lo here a fiend, 'gainst here whose matron heart 
Taught us the glory of the earth-Heaven — home! 
Wagner is perished, Fafner wrote his fate — 
Where was the transport of the Homeric page 
Nought scrawls but spittle of impotent hate — 
True manhood shrivelled to the spite of age ! 
Toll, toll the Bell, ye towers of Cologne — 
Ring out your tears ! Old Germany is dead ! 
Where grew her myrtles new tongues shall be known — 
She lives a curse — her soul forever fled! 



[39] 



ENGLAND 

I love thee, England! English is my name 

My heart, my soul ! Brief fifty years agone — 

He saw this Newer England, he, whose blood 

Runs in these veins, and English blood, God praise ! 

My sires clustered mid the pale faced hills 

Of bard begetting Cheviot; o'er the moors 

The clefts of furze capped rocks, the minstrels roamed 

When Robin's crown was not of dust begat 

And Alan coaxed his songs from woodland gods ! 

Loin of my Loins, in these few latter years 

Shall I lose thought of thee, my fathers' womb? 

This Newer England is thy strong-limbed child 

Stalwart as fits her mother's natal gift! 

And now my heart is glad with that old joy 

My kinsmen felt dead generations gone 

When friend laid bare his falchion that his friend 

Might know the name of friendship fervour's heat 

No mere thin-silvered gloss. Two Englands move — 

Two souls made one ; mine is America 

By right, by love; and, England, thou art mine 

By first imperial birth of ancestry — 

By reason's choice-nay, were thy blood not mine 

I still would crown thee time's imperial queen ! 

Thy faults be those of gods ; thine errors mass 

More pure than others' virtues ! He, the knave 

On this our western shore, who bites thy heel 

Is bastard to thee, dastard to this west 

That shall live English while the waters roar — 

And Nature heralds spring in bloss of green! 

Let whine the peevish dolt, thy soul is here 

[40] 



In this America ! Who strikes at thee 

Strikes her, thy strongest daughter; England, Uve 

The generous mistress of the cirding seas — 

And with thy children rule the listening stars ! 

And we, who boast thy blood, be David's sons 

The line most royal since creation shaped 

This nebulous substance from the breath of God! 

Thank God for England ! God be praised, my screed 

My tribute scroll, I write in English words ! 



[41] 



POET TO WOMAN 

I know thee; 

From the dark womb of my thought 

Children have sprung, veil-garbed in verse and rhyme. 

Like thee from pain and travail have I wrought 

Truth substance, hell conceived, in God's full time. 

I know thee. 

Anguish only climbs to love 

As thou and I must climb, our birth's decree. 

Men walk; the virgin's wings are ours to hove 

By black-starred shores of ill-read mystery. 

Friend, I have woman in me ; dreams ne'er screed 

By form of man, all man; and I, like thee 

In being's fond by right of godhood bleed; 

Creation's Egg, all woman, sheathes in me ! 



[42] 



LONDON FOG 

A writhing witch, with tenuous fluttering arms — 

Her yellow locks outstreaming to the wind. 

She breeds an hell-broth with her nebulous charms ; 

She staggers; hair a-twist — the witch is blind! 

Jointured with dying, Madge Wildfire in death — 

House, palace, street ; on each her f rore is laid. 

The nightmare ether of a sickman's breath — 

This London fog! One sun-lance, lo, crusade 

Of Baldurs, of clear invigorating blue! 

A fist of hours, the witch is fled afar 

Her half-soul stirring mid the thick of brew 

'Gainst chance of visitation; yet, though touch 

Of her, this Hell-thing, seems the Third Sad Fate — 

Yet is her threat a shadow's weakling clutch! 

A chimera, a nothingness of fate. 

Below — lies London ! Fogs a-gone, a-come 

No whit dismay the world's most blazoned queen; 

Nor shall a monster fog with scare of drum 

Affront this London's grave imperial mien ! 

As pass these harpy wraiths, so came to pass 

A war's chimeric hell-smoke; London stands 

A rock when Berlins melt as futile glass — 

A smiling mother to the English lands ! 



[43] 



SIMPLICITY 

A fervent prayer; soul sick of war — 
Good Lord, give us simplicity! 
We dree our weird — complexity — 
And hence our plight; an unhealed sore 
We needs must heal ; let us return 
To single-minded Galilee; 
The truths we blur as platitudes 
Let fall by Him who was of Thee. 
We've hatched the dreadful Loki broods 
The Midgard snake ; the ice of Hel. 
We've "reasoned," till this Egg took form 
Whose monster woke this horrent mell. 
'Gainst pastured meads we chose the storm 
The chaos of a doubtful skill. 
And whence our boast ? The end, the front 
Of sophist's wisdom — this — to kill! 
Well have we earned this devil's brunt 
We, things of paste-cheeked luxury! 
Behold in sackcloth we repent — 
Kind Lord, give us simplicity ! 
Now done with noise of armament 
Let us bruise herbs beside Thy brooks ; 
Again read Nature's woodland books — 
Dear Lord, give us simplicity! 



[44] 



WINTER TWILIGHT IN PRAGUE 

Opal steals through the opaque gray 

Now that the sad day's closing; black 

Of the night, dusked with dim purple steals 

On like a soft-shod thief. Blurred lamps 

Stream like the friendly struggling beams 

Of far-off lighthouses through the mist 

Dank-deep at sea. The soul feels cold ! 

Mysticism sighs in the air! 

Knife-sharp welts of cold alone betray 

The prod of winter's iron malignant sting. 

But else, how unrelated, how unreal 

Mid life's ambitions is this somethingness 

Of lineless wavering, soft, yet tangible 

Veiled o'er the soul ere it enwraps the flesh ! 

'Tis like the half -waked Slav; 'tis like old Prague 

Sleeping hard sleep ; white-haired from centuries 

Of hack-hewed battles ; wise with wisdom's droop 

Of eyes fast closed, as sight had served its worth ! 

'Tis melancholia; shuffling footsteps seem 

As weak half -ghosts, who feebly would essay 

The angel garments; voiceless, timid, weak — 

Yet wistful of eternities undreamed. 

'Twixt gray of day and night's nun-veil of black 

Is scarce a breath ; but in that breath hath passed 

As a soul half-dead; so tired that death's advent 

Is but the slipping off of needless shoon 

And stealing bare-foot on a path unknown 

To vague unwondered nothingness ; Truth, this is 

Nirvana's foretaste ; and a ghost am I 

Mid ghosts as fellows, dead as they are dead. 

[45] 



THESE DAYS 

We've nerves these days ! 

No head, no heart, no soul — mere nerves ! 

We shriek in angles, sneer in curves — 

We writhe in Pandemonium maze. 

We each are blood of the Gummidge tribe. 

We croak like frogs in a stagnant pool. 

We may be gods, but we ape the fool — 

We stick out tongues ; we mouth and gibe 

Like children o'er some toffee bit ; 

And yet, God knows, there's work to do ! 

But, chip on shoulder wild hullabaloo — 

And nineteen ways of spittling spit ! 

We wage on beer and nicotine — 

We seize each by his front and throat. 

God, force on us Thy creosote — 

Pray rub our souls with Nature's green ! 

Or else we perish, Bander-Log — 

Unfit to walk Thy kindly meads ! 

By Christ's Eternal Heart that bleeds 

To watch us grovel, each a dog 

Chained to his vomit — give us heads 

Cool as the snows, give tempered hearts! 

Look — selfish greed bestrides our marts 

And hog with satyr boldly weds ! 

God, save our nations, lest array 

Our souls lost on Thy Judgment Day ! 



[46] 



YOU WHO ARE DEAD 

You're not gone ; translated, changed, nor decayed. 
You're lying there, staring through six feet of earth 
With black eyes wink full of Dickensesque mirth 
And grinning at life as a game well outplayed ! 
And I see you, rogue comrade, stumbling o' nights 
O'er Molly prim rose-bushes, pooh-poohing wreaths 
Mocking each ass soul that wiggles and breathes 
Whilst you prowl amidst graves and their trig-nancied 

sights ! 
Still, there are stars, and a moon, random whiles — 
And you've me, silent gypsy, to sing to your soul ; 
Though you can't toss a posset, or drain a deep bowl 
You can feast on our fellowship's echo of smiles. 
For we're one. If you're lonely, just conjure up me 
Your trail-mate, fast bound to a winter of days 
And a black grief that chokes me, that coils close, and 

stays 
Till I envy you, comrade, ice-laid, but free ! 
For you can't reckon life as the prism I know 
With your part soul gripped fast where trails all must 

end. 
But still I half sense you ; and praise God, leal friend — 
You're a real speaking something — God whispered me 

so! 



[47] 



PATRIOTISM 

Perchance 'tis well — a sugared snatch of song 

Profaned of music's grand intrinsic worth; 

The crude half -thinker's sway of rhythm's mirth 

The wildfire thrill bom of the dim-brained throng :- 

Perchance, 'tis well ; the flag thrown to the wind — 

The hand spat tribute wrest from Moll and Jock — 

This — patriotism: the quick galvanic shock 

Harmonic to the yokel and his kind. 

The mob is still the mob, let fall the cloak — 

The pompous nomen of esprit de corps. 

Now Brutus, now Antonius earns its roar — 

Christ or Barabas — crowned the last who spoke. 

Patriotism! The statesman blenched with thought 

Lives its white passion ; the evolvent master brain 

Stammers its terrors; mid the careless train 

Ne'er may its godhood be mid blood-heat wrought! 

Silence its travail ; sapience, its fruit : 

Bruit antipodes its birth-pains; where it broods 

Apoethosis still all lesser moods 

And for its octave seventh grasps are mute! 

Patriotism! For me 'tis most akin 

To that most awful hush, when God in Host 

Descends in fulness of the Holy Ghost 

And dwells each recess of my soul within! 

A truth I dare not limit ; raising me 

To something of its fixed divinity ! 



[48] 



"GONE WEST" 

He's just "Gone West." 

And he left this watchword — "Carry on !" 

There was blood and smirch ; a rose-pink dawn 

And a Thing left dead ; but what's the rest ? 

Out of the thing a soul sprang free — 

A spirit man, six foot and three! 

Spirit, not phantom, in God clothes dressed — 

With brown eyes steadfast to the west! 

And it's best. 

"Carry on !" He has work to do — 

And I, his mother, I'll "carry on" too — 

For the breeze of the Blessed Isles blows here 

I feel it ; I'll not damp his trail with a tear 

For the Blessed Isles lie west ! 

I'll carry on — an American! 

For I bore six foot of allied man 

Whose clarioning "Westward ho !" 

The ruled out west-path I can't know 

But God and the stalwart Christ are there 

And Mother Mary ; the tang of air 

Blows health to the Allied cause ! 

I care not what mete theology's laws 

He's "gone west"— 

Not dead — my night's his dawn — 

And we've both the watchword — "Carry on!" 



[49] 



CHUCKED 

You're chucked; kicked out from all worth while. 

Your milestone's passed on Heartbreak Hill. 

You'll learn now — a maiden grief can't kill 

Or a first thrust rasp a sunrise smile. 

Nor yet the second, nor yet the third; 

You'll find the rope gripped round my neck — 

The rope that bites, but never hangs — 

You'll kiss the bark with hidden fangs 

And still seek fruit sans littlest speck 

Look at me ! I've been chucked and chucked 

And still can shrug my soul and laugh ! 

The heart wounds leave my face unscarred — 

I still dream wheat though fed on chaff. 

You'll head gates five-knife points barred 

As I and others — rise, well plucked — 

Tom, bruised and battered; bleeding, scarred — 

Yet praying, laughing! Snibs of sun 

And tastes of green will cry you on 

To champ once more from Babylon 

And play Quixote ! Chucked? Well done! 

Shake hand with soul — your wreath ? Well plucked ! 

There's God — His place — there, no one's chucked! 



[so] 



CONDOLENCE 

I who have moaned Tenebra thrice three times — 
Have looked long down the Valley of the Shades ; 
Say thus to thee; build not conjectured climes 
From ill-wrought dreams of heavenly palisades 
Where lost ones chance may dwell ; God's heart is 

here — 
Here in the humdrum of the commonplace. 
In box-hedged gardens lies thy salve of grace; 
And trivial bits; the fragrant brew of tea — 
The tropic lustred coffee; homespun toil — 
Life's lettuce leaves ; iotas fend from thee 
The lead of snake now 'gainst thy breast a-coil. 
This wear thee on thy bosom's seeming stone 
As rosemary- ; Nature is one with God ; 
And both fain heal in wholesome monotone 
With tasks that set the shivering feet a-plod 
Till simple duties, angel vigils keep 
And thou dost know thy dead in God asleep ! 



[51] 



AMERICA 

America ; — 

In after years, the pomp of fighting done — 
The keen blade rusted, victories' tale hearth-spun — 
When commerce pinions forth in peace once more 
And grass downs breast the earth's harass of war : 
Forget not those who thrilled with love of you 
Loathing of Mars, but praising truth — as true — 
Your truth and England's — forget not those, I pray 
Who sink to garrulous life's dull after-day; 
One socket eyeless, one sleeve less its arm — 
One limb oblation to the dread alarm 
Of belching hell ; oh, praise is theirs in truth 
While yet the slaught lives on in echo's youth ! 
While glamour glists as hero each who fought 
And eyes droop for wonders God hath wrought! 
But when the glamour fades, and plaudits cool- 
Dub not the hero maimed as "tiresome fool" — 
And think not penny pensions meet largesse 
For those who doffed the clerkman's harmless dress 
And donned the guise that beckoned steel and shell 
And made of life's sweet solstice garnished hell ! 
Remember these, in after years, I pray — 
Do not as Judas, thy liege Christs betray — 
America ! 



[52] 



KING GEORGE 

No widening breach therein ; democracy 

Britannia as America endowers. 

Full sceptered here the magisterial powers — 

Fraternal founded, England's royalty. 

The crowned Republic, the Republic crowned; 

"What's in a name?" King friend of Windsor, hail! 

Iron is thine English staunch armorial mail — 

Long live thy land in purple worth renowned ! 

A king here domiciled? Anomaly! 

England in plain clothes? Boorish peasant jest! 

Peace guard the ways ! King indeed professed 

First gentleman of England! Honesty 

Heart's praise impels; Victoria's scion thou — 

God save the King who gave thy land her Queen! 

While spreads the loyal oak its shoots of green 

The monarch's emblem bind the Windsor's brow ! 

Night's death blast Hohenzollerns ; autocrats 

All breeds, all births ; our brothers' love is thine ! 

The goldenrod and English rose atwine 

Dower alike Time's true aristocrats ! 

Long live King George! America we sing — 

Our under rhythm shouts God save thee — King! 



[53] 



INTERRUPTED 

His laugh was interrupted; 'twas a shell — 

Of war a part — his life's synecdoche. 

Valhalla from a bawdy bit of hell — 

He left his laugh — the greater part — with me! 

My blood flows still unspilled — I feel it crime 

To live unscathed, my Damon hurtled "west." 

That Falstaff slice of laugh! Some future time 

He'll tell me why his sudden flight was best ! 

God never interrupts us ; past a doubt 

He'll hold that laugh for me and laugh it out ! 



[54] 



DEATH AND DAWN 

Strange and terrible ! Terrible and strange ! 
That gray black hour before the Dawn's pink mist; 
Aurora's steeds steeped forth the deeps to range 
On Sleep's invisible mount of amythest — 
Men creatures ravel out! That hush of time 
When stillness cuddles earth maternally — 
When cherubs scatter banded dreams of thyme 
That Easter hour — that Death should canter free 
His grim horse Hecate pale ; and snatch in souls 
-By gibbering handf uls ; bird feeds piping faint — 
Wood dryads fluttering on moss satin knolls — 
Then to thin out the death-chant's toneless plaint! 
Life wombed anew ; and as the vestal flush 
Blesses the world in hyacinthine prayer — 
Death tiptoes out ; hush greets in passing, Hush — 
A two-fold sigh strings on the violin air ! 
Thus Death and Dawn ; a queen that greets a king — 
Exchanged in passing crown and signet-ring! 



[551 



THE OLD HOUSE 

The old house is drugged to sleep 
By some narcotic of the past. 
One drowsing window wakes to peep 
At ponderous dray-carts jumbling fast 
O'er sharp-voiced pavestones ; dead repose 
Of human history's dropped morphine. 
That pile some lurid story knows — 
Some dangled skeleton has seen! 



[56] 



THE LONE CYPRESS AT MONTEREY 

Ages it watched thus; is its glance malign 

Or wearied with the chance moods of the sea 

To it, one mood. Tide's sweep froth of line 

Dashing exultant, staving minstrelsy 

Of rack and death ; lamb's touch on the sward 

In gentler passions ; both, a child's intent 

To this lone pterodactyl; is 't on guard — 

Its dim eye fearful of new armament 

From strange blear yellow seas? Or doth it dream 

A race long lost, of nobler form? It sighs 

Chance, for a child long since a man; a gleam 

Of moon translucence gilds it. Dust-kissed eyes 

Have wondered on its wonder; eyes to come 

May ponder its first meaning; its old youth. 

Shall it be this land then ? Will Fate's turned thumb 

Sluff out this people, spurned remorse and ruth? 

Still shall the cypress gnarl in awkward grace — 

Beholding eyes — set in a yellow face? 



[57] 



GOD'S ANTHOLOGY 

Ghastly ! The poets who were poets ! They 

All died; do any live? Thus, he and he 

Wrote sonnet, ode and epic; here and there 

A woman's thought soared as a meadow lark. 

Great song ! True verse ! The clock struck twelve times 

twelve 
Ten thousand times ten thousand, strand and zone ! 
But God — all dead — all vanished! So and so 
Lived such a place, wrote such a line — and died! 
If, as the Scriptures read, God's witnesses 
Dwell ever on the earth, His poets must 
Be incarnate in hidden baby forms ; 
And, in their passing to the Fuller Sound 
Give poet's eye and ear to some mute soul 
New sprung to sense of being. But, the past 
Shines with a lustre gathered through the years — 
And present purpose no enchantment has 
Because its nearness dims its diamond worth. 
Thus in the Last Recessional, we know 
Strains will be heard that died here on the earth; 
And every impulse of the poet's soul 
Will live when God makes His Anthology ! 



[58] 



IN FLORIDA 

When Elman played, th' applause, made hippocrene 
O'er flowed in alabaster. Soft, his bow- 
Prayed in the Ave Maria; faith's Nicene 
Glowed lucent in the slow devotional flow 
Of strings concorded to the Merlian rod. 
"Ave Maria!" 'twas the cygnian cry 
Of those who love, and love, alas, to die — 
Their sins by Mary born as pearls to God ! 
The orange tree withdrew its bold perfume 
Abashed before the music's natal sighs. 
The oleanders oped their languid eyes 
And gazed, trance bounden, through the foyer's gloom. 
"Ave Maria" ; sudden wailed without 
A shattered fiddle's meek unconscious hymn; 
A tenuous prayer, through Schubert's interim 
Beseeching them, the peacock feathered route. 
For few brief pence, the fiddler blind and old 
Shambled in rasps, "When you and I were young." 
Still Elman's bow in master cadence swung — 
Without, within, which were the tone of gold 
To Mary's heart? 'Twas Dives at the gate 
Of Lazarus; who scrolled it — chance or Fate? 



[59] 



FROM MY DORMER WINDOW 

Night and silence! Cloudy night, no stars; 
I see in faint outline far-lying roofs. 
I hear below the rush of noisy cars. 
The pound of horses pelting with their hoofs. 
Silence! How many dying while I stand 
Here at the window? Vice and sin unloose 
Their kennel's breed; this hour's shifting sand 
May chronicle a murder, mark abuse 
Of mind or body. Dimly I perceive 
Two Crosses rise on near-by church. I know 
The Christ keeps watch and mankind must believe 
He welcomes friend and pardons blinded foe. 
And I am happy ! I have heard the voice 
Born on the wire of my beloved! Night, 
Thou hast thy sorrows, but I must rejoice — 
Thou night, art blind, but I have spirit's sight ! 
No need to tell my love to him; he knows 
Without the telling; so I send my prayer 
To him. In silence my whole being goes — 
He looks — he knows — and I am with him there! 



[60] 



RIPE GRAPES 

Give me ripe grapes ! The leaves may fall, 
The blight of autumn brood o'er all. 
The fruit is sweet — our blood is red — 
Let's live the heart despite the head! 



[6i] 



NUNC DIMITTIS 

The blare of battle died in smoke away; 

The soldier gasped ; his hand strayed to his beads. 

He dying with the sad vermilian day 

Shuddering before the sight of Moloch deeds 

Done in the name of war ; his fingers, numb 

With death's antarctic, told the Aves ten — 

The six last Paters ; hands fell : voice was dumb 

But eyes beseeched — oh to behold again 

The Crucifix worn o'er his burnt-out heart 

Star of his faith, alembic of his soul ! 

A sombre Rabbai mused a space apart 

Tranced by the guns last Pandemonium roll. 

A Judas Maccabeus of his race; 

An exile of the Babylonish streams. 

The Christ he knew not lit his eager face — 

His gaze fixed on the earth, its shell-made seams. 

Sudden his eyes the war-claimed soldier swept ; 

In pity's moistened flash he knelt beside. 

The Cross on death-dewed Hps were laid; he wept. 

The soldier smiled ; his eyes spake thanks ; he died. 

Nunc Dimittis ! These poor unworthy eyes 
Have seen creeds merge to further Paradise! 



[62] 



POST BELLUM 

Now 'tis ended; 

Why had it to be? 

Home and love rended — 

Death-sown the sea. 

Doubt; dark; bewilderment; ice breaths of pain 

For the lone dead on crimson fields lain. 

Crash, dies the music ! Hiss, die the lights ! 

Days, webbed with memories ; long starless nights 

When cry the Rachels; Marys at Cross 

Beat milkless breasts for the wild sense of loss. 

One flare of pageant — then moments to think — 

Marah, not Lethe, in deep quaffs to drink. 

God, the All-Terrible, why was it, why? 

Thou, who art Life, what sped men to die? 

Beyond and above is the Cause — Father — Thou! 

Still, Thou art Love, and still needs we bow 

Whispering, hands clasped, *'Thy will be done" — 

Calvary, the Mother, Calvary, the Son. 

Leal fare the nations? Perished the sword? 

Finite, we question Thee, Battles' strong Lord! 

Infinite wonder — why had it to be? 

Thou 'twas who urged us ; Thine the decree ! 

Do as Thou wilt with us ; fain must we weep — 

Scythes of destruction; first fruts of sleep 

Fix us Medusa-like; this, we implore — 

Smite us, but nevermore, nevermore, war! 

Now 'tis ended — 

Why had it to be? 

Home and love rended — 

But, Father, 'twas Thee ! 

[63] 



THE FAUN 

The Faun is the Superman ! 

The Man-Woman Plato prophesied — 

And hopeless, sighed 

While prophesying. 

He looked forward : vision ran 

Outvieing 

Good nature sense, that roots so deep 

The grass may not find it, nor long womb sleep 

Of great oak embryos. 

The Faun alone it is, who knows 

The Over- Soul of God; 

The Lower-Soul of Man; 

The Somewhat-Soul of Flowers and Beasts! 

The acorn in the sod. 

The human caravan. 

The soul-pulse in the four foot priests 

Of Nature, make the Christ! 

This, in old tryst 

The Faun doth know! The All- Soul he — 

And had but Plato opened vision's history 

This had he known. 

The pointed ears, the dancing toe, alone 

Bespeak the Superman. 

Christ is born of Pan; 

The Trinity in wildwood Unity; 

The beast culled in the flower, 

The hill's rock power 

In the babe's smile — 

Mary in Ceres. Some new mile 

In man's new reckoning shows the antique Faun 

The foremost figure in the world's new Dawn ! 

[64] 



EVENING IN A HOSPITAL 

Evening gloams; ghost-mantled with snow 
But few brief paces distant-Ufe and light. 
Street lamps moon globed with kindly fostering glow- 
A welcome clatter dins the friendly night. 
And here — a bed, a window ; two gaunt pines 
Caught in the pane's rectangle ; night or day — 
Here life snaps links with life; these cribbed fines 
Know nought of man's routine; man's holiday 
Is still the world of physic, glass and spoon — 
A couch where 'tis to drone, half-wake, half -sleep. 
The stars, the dawn, the crowned joy of noon — 
Are nought to beats the pulses' rhythm keep. 
Here life is steeped in Death, and Sleep may touch 
His Elder Brother's hand, and share his cold. 
Here joy crawls out, impeded by a crutch — 
And, chained to sick-beds, who is young, who old? 
Yet no inertia's Limbo ! Strife is waged 
'Twixt Love and Silence — Courage and Despair! 
Here voiceless fields of battle! Here the gage 
Is flung each sand-slip; here resolve in prayer! 
And there is mystery ; the greater mind 
In throb accordant with the surgeon's knife; 
The lesser mind, in mercy deaf and blind 
To agony of soul arest with Life ! 
And here the Great Physician ever stands 
His heart a-brim with germinance of peace. 
His is the healing in the skilful hands — 
Or Life, or Death — from Pain He yields release! 



[65] 



THE HOME COMING 

With the laggard sunset, home we came ; 
We entered; one purple tinge of flame 
Enwrapped us, as through the door we passed. 
April rains, and buds amassed 
On the wisteria, sprawled o'er the porch 
Set afire by the sun's last torch. 
We entered; we spoke not; we heard the sea 
Sighing its endless litany — 
And a half felt sadness dimmed me; sight 
Was barred me of its monotone's might. 
For to feel, and hear e'en taste the deep 
And know it droned through the hours of sleep — 
Yet live anear, and all unseen 
Its foamy tracks of salt-flecked green 
Seemed like the rose of an infant's breath 
Sucked on milk that was drawn of death. 
The lights were glimmering; and what my fears 
For the bridal night, and the brood of years 
Stretching in endless procession away 
From the mileage-post of the wedding-day 
I could not tell ; I smelt the turf — 
And felt like some olden riveted serf 
Chained to her master; and yet, had I turned 
Where the feeble death lights of sunset burned 
To ash of blackness — I knew my feet 
Would bear me back from the prosing street 
And urge me straight to his arms again 
And what might come of undreamed pain ! 
His arms wound round me; the thick night fell — 
Our home ; my Heaven ! — ^yet reached through hell ! 

[66] 



THE GRAY DAY 

The day slinks out like a gray old rat 

And curls in the wet depths of the sky. 

And there it yawns : like curds from a vat 

It poaches the mist-bits, drifting by. 

And whether to melt in a sheet of rain 

Or sulk till misnomered sunset strives 

To piece sun honey as sweet again — 

Where the day bees drip in their dampened hives,- 

I know not ; 'tis a day for a "poet's moode" 

To pout of ivy on mouldy walls; 

And sigh for the graveyard trench as good — 

And moan of the wind to the mist that calls. 

And dream of childhood's vanished joys, 

And count life's pleasures a babbling noise — 

And life's enhancements as broken toys — 

And men of valor but puling boys ! 

But what of the day and its rodent face? 

A mood's not a permanency ! Sun bees will hum 

And a day burst forth with a moss rose grace ; 

And inspirations will sprout, and come 

In galaxies ambrosial rich ! 

And the autumn leaves clattering in the ditch 

Will be over gold a cloak of pitch — 

And this day that seems a drab old witch 

Will be a faery greenwood Hght! 

So drowse, old rat of a day! Your coat 

Is gray as doubt and cold as fear ! 

But one day's not the worth of a year 

And joy's immortal! For her no bier 

[67] 



Of back- thread sighs ! So your nought to me 
For I Uve and I love for Eternity ! 
And the sober coat of a gray old day 
Can't filch an eternal kingdom away! 



The End. 



[68] 



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